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Into the Bloody Twilight


Hello. This is my own timeline that starts in 678 AD, with an original POD before the Völkswanderung, that details an alternate world. I realize that I will probably get some ASB here and there. There will also be some parallels- don’t expect colonization before the 15th century at the earliest. There will not be tanks in 17th century Europe. The style will generally be history book- I am bollocks at narrative. So sit back, relax, and let the blood flow in the rivers of Europe.

A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Völkswanderungs, Svetlana Ragnarevna Skokolskaya, Hilmgorod [1] University Press, 1881

The Twilight-Born: Latin Successor States in the Völkswanderungs

As the Western Empire began to slowly slip away, the non-barbarian parts of the Roman army, allied with local governors, began to declare independence in efforts to solidify control over pieces of the great Roman carcass. These successor states would have varying success in maintaining Roman technology, culture and systems of governance as they faced down the barbarian invasions and the slow erosion of the imperial social structure.

While the Western Empire persisted in Italy until 555, outlying provinces such as Gaul, Hispania and Brittania began to break away at the end of the fourth and the beginning and middle of the fifth century. Many such states, especially in Gaul, Northern Italy, and the Balkans were minor; these small, local states, were easily destroyed by the barbarian migrants, and bear little notice here.

The first area to truly separate from Imperial rule was Brittania. In 381, a general by the name of Oppius Seius Aruns raised the banner of revolt from the empire just as a new wave of barbarian invasions struck the empire. Unlike previous pretenders, Aruns, born in Britain and a native son, generally revolted, at least at first, in order to gain localized power, and to protect his homeland; previous pretenders used the island as a springboard to attack the continent. The legions of Britain united under his banner, but his focus on Brittania meant that he was generally loath to invade Gaul (which was undergoing mass instability at the time).

Instead, he organized the civil and military systems of Britain, and consolidated the state. A relatively young man at the time, Aruns managed to keep Britain stable and civilized despite outside duress.

The Saxons and Frisians had been subdued by internal strife and the invasions of the Chakas [2] and other Germanic peoples in Gaul- raids had been halted in the short term, something that was key to the survival of the nascent state.

Luck shone for the young Regnum Brittanicum again as the Eirini-Picti Wars picked up in intensity. The Eirini [3] tribes were busy fighting the Picts with varied levels of success, which distracted them. In 395, Aruns got his chance to nullify the northern and western threats to his sovereignty. The Picts had beaten the Eirini at the Battle of the Red Rocks, with heavy casualties. The Romans, by comparison, had been building forts and a navy in the 14 years since Aruns’ rebellion.

Forces led by Aruns and other Roman and Briton commanders invaded first Caledonia, swiftly defeating the remaining tribes. This conquest is a turning point in the history of Brittania- the victorious soldiers were given land to rule in the new lands as a form of payment, thereby keeping the legions loyal to Aruns and the new order. These gifts of lands conferred upon victorious officers and conquered vassal kings power within the new government, which had various ways of being transferred from person to person.

This is the beginning of post-Roman feudalism, something that would only increase with the importation of Angles and Frisians as “land-working freemen” in most of the country, a practice that would start in full after the death of Aruns. Allowing voluntary settlement was a suave move on the part of Aruns- it stopped the increasing level of raids by inviting the people in and then slowly assimilating them. Generally, the Picti also served as the genesis of the modern peasantry, at least in Caledonia, Northern Brittania, and Northern Hibernia. Some Eirini lords even assimilated into the Roman nobility, forming the higher families Obrianus, Oniallus, Queneddius, Oruarcus, and many other smaller families. Most Roman nobility, however, came from the legions or the Brythons, while many of the soldiers became free farmers, the beginnings of the Brittanian middle class, so to speak. The rest of the great Romano-Brythonic population became the citizens of the cities- traders and craftsmen.

After conquering in full Caledonia and Hibernia by the year 400, Aruns declared a new name for his ramshackle country- the Empire of Albion, taking the name from Ptolemy. The capital was moved to Eboracum permanently, and the civil structure of the country began to come into being.

The 14 years afterward were ones of peace- the raiding peoples of the North Sea had been laid low by war and plague, and couldn’t muster the strength to come raid the country.

Aruns would end up dying in 414, after 33 years of ruling the islands as a personal fiefdom. His dynasty, the House of Seiruns, continued with his son Arcturus the Builder, responsible for building much of the roads and forts that dot the entirety of Britain. However, the raids also picked up in the reign of Arcturus and his successors- the reign of his grandson, Gnaeus, saw the razing of Venta Icenorum [4], Lindum [5] and Noviomagus [6], and raids of Londinium by bands of Saxons, Frisians and other disaffected Germanic peoples. Despite these attacks, the Empire lived on, withstanding, with varying levels of success, invasion from the North Sea. The Harrowing of the South, as it is called by scholars, left most of the south-eastern fringes of Britain raided, burnt and otherwise economically ruined. Londinium went from a competitor to Eboracum to a smaller city, the countryside full of smallholder farmers.

After the reign of Gnaeus Pictus (named so for his Pictish mother), the Empire began to regain strength. The southernmost tip was heavily fortified and urbanized, and raids generally went up the Thames rather than towards ports like Durbis [7]. As the 5th century turned into the 6th century, raids began to die down- most Angles and Frisians had either been settled in Hibernia as subjects and foederati, while the Saxons had carved out for themselves a coastal kingdom in Germany centralized enough to eliminate the economic need for raids.

At the same time, the Latin nature of the state began to slowly fade away. Hibernia, for example, had no Roman base to begin with- the island was populated with Roman lords, Roman merchants, and a much larger Angle and Eirini underclass that worked the land. As opposed to the freeholder farmers in Brittania, most of Hibernia was feudal, with the notable exception of Southern Ireland, the lands around Tara, and the urbanized areas. Caledonia was a wild land, slowly settled with soldier settler freeholders, and Roman lords, with a large peasant class made up of Eirini and small groups of Picts. The other major class lay in the church- Brittania had been declared Arian by Aruns, and most missionary activity to the pagan soldiers and settlers within the empire had been of an Arian extraction. The Arian church, which held sway in Africa and parts of Germania, had established a new Patriarchy- Carthage, and then the Patriarchy of Segontium [8], established by the great Arian missionary Saint Patricius.

As time went on, however, the collection of diverse and distinct peoples, coupled with the lack of Roman population pressure and cultural pressure, led to the dilution of the Roman heritage within the islands. The royal dynasty lost its Roman heritage- the last Seiruns Emperor, Constantinus, was succeded by Alistarus Quennedius (an offshoot of a previously mentioned Eirini dynasty; Brython-Eirini dynasty based in Cornubia) in the year 616. The nobles, while remembering their legionary roots, had begun to shift towards a new identity. The armies, for example, had slowly stopped being professional as the noble class became more sedentary. Roman architecture barely penetrated Caledonia, and only reached the southern parts of Hibernia.

The language even began to change- Emperor Aelus the Scholar, in 666, wrote the first dictionary of “Albionic”, the urban lingua franca of the Empire that took from Latin, Brython, Eirini and a bit of East Angle dialects to form one great language. By 678, this language was being introduced across the country through the Arian Church. 678 is considered the end of the Roman Era in Albion. With the nobility becoming intermarried, with Latin losing ground everywhere except in scholarly work and the courts of nobles, and with a new culture beginning to emerge, the Roman identity lost prescience in Albion. A new people had come about, with Roman influences dominating, but sharing space with, influences from the conquered peoples of Brittania. The Seiruns dynasty was dead, and the legions had transformed from the army of the nation to an elite urban class of merchants and professional soldiers, small and dedicated. The language had already spread to the countryside along the roads, and then onward to the nobles. By the year 717, Old Albionic had proliferated amongst the country- the Roman heritage of the state in culture became less and less apparent as time went on.


The other Roman successor states, unlike the anomaly of Albion, did not survive past the later migrations, only staying as long as they did due to inter-barbarian conflicts. In Gaul, the only Roman successor state was the Duchy of Aremorica, which only lasted from 400-444, when it was conquered by the Gepids. The state was largely military in nature, and most Roman troops from Aremorica either defected to the Gepids or went north.

In Hispania, the successor state started later than either Aremorica or Albion- the Dominium of Olissipo was created in 411 by local governor Mamercus Naso. As the Vandals razed such cities as Valentia, Carthago Nova and Merita, the Dominium concentrated enough defenses in the countryside to prevent such an invasion. When the Vandals left for North Africa, the Alans were left behind in what was Southeastern Hispania, and they set up a kingdom for themselves. While incursions were made by the Alans into central Hispania up to the Tagus, the Western border lie in the Corduba-Malaca line, which separated the Dominium from the Kingdom of the Alans. In the north, the last of the Chaka resided, ruling down to the Tagus and east to the mountains where the Vascones lived. The Naso family managed to defend the Dominium fairly well- at least, until the Moor invasions. The Moors were North African tribes driven out by the Vandal Empire of North Africa, pushed into Mauretania until they finally were expelled for rebellion in the year 493. At first, the Moors raided coastal cities, mainly Alan cities without a naval garrison. In the year 505, however, Amrus of the Ulhasa clan invaded Hispania with about 10,000 warriors. The Dominium, by this point, had deposed the Naso family and had installed a corrupt oligarchy. Amrus, by winter, had conquered up to Gades and was making a beeline towards Malaqa.

Over the winter, more men came to reinforce the Moorish host as the Dominium fractured apart. The oligarchy had split into factions over the assassination of one man by another, and the entire country was falling apart. The legions had long disappeared fighting the Alans and the Chaka. The Moors, now 25,000 strong, besieged and conquered Malaqah and Corduba by July. In a peace treaty in September, the entire southern tip and north-eastern regions of the Dominium came under Moorish control, led by now-King Amrus I. After the peace treaty, the countryside rebelled, and the Dominium lost control outside the far western regions and the country by Olissippo. The rebelling regions were conquered by February, and on the Ides of March, 506, Amrus invaded the Alan kingdom, which was experiencing a regency. The nobles were rebelling against the small council in charge of the kingdom, and when the young king apparent died of fever on April 4th as Amrus approached the capital in Toletum, all hell broke loose. Opportunistic nobles invited the dynamic King Amrus to take, at least apparently, the Alan crown, and Borena, daughter of the last King, Yasynyna, married Amrus on April 11th.

As 506 progressed, the Chaka, having centralized around royal authority in what is now Pardsqal [9], decided to invade south into the fractured dominium. They managed to cut off Olissippo and conquer the rest of the Dominium. By this point, the Dominium was reduced to the environs around the city, no better than a doomed Athens facing a greater Sparta.

For 9 long years, the two powers of the peninsula, the Moors and the Chaka, fought against each other, until the Chaka emerged victorious at the Battle of Ossonoba. King Amrus, once mighty, was shot in the middle of the forehead by an arrow, and his army routed. However, the noble hosts were also reduced on both sides, and the Chaka King, after the battle, had an entire kingdom made up of Alan, Chaka, Moor and Lusitanian Roman nobles, sworn in at the capital in Corduba. Finally, on October 5th, the Dominium was conquered by the Chaka, leaving all but northeastern Hispania in the hands of the Chaka king and the barbarian nobles.

The final successor state, in technical terms, was not a successor state, but rather the actual Western Empire, living on below the Po as Genua and the Alpine regions fell to Germanic tribes. After 469, peace settled in the lands above the Po as the Germanic tribes tried to conquer one another. The rest of the Empire, by then, had seceded or fallen, and it was ignobly reduced to Italy, crawling back to Rome as it had exploded for centuries beforehand.

By 500, the Western Empire had been reduced to the peninsula- Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily belonged to the Vandal power in Africa, and the north had fallen to the German confederations of all stripes. As the 6th century went on, the Empire slowly got weaker as nobles bucked Imperial authority and soldiers assassinated their puppets at will. It was only internecine wars amongst the Germans that stopped greater conquest of the peninsula. The last cracks began in 523, with the Slavo-Lombard invasion. The Lombards had been trying to invade Italy for a decade, but had been conquered by invading Slavic tribes beaten back in the north by Germanic tribes. The 523 invasion resulted in the conquest of Ravenna and Florentia, and the influx of German tribes into the regions the Slavs had just left- the Po-Genua line was the border of Italy, marked by German walls. The south was conquered in 534, culminating in the razing of Neapolis [10] on August 14. A power struggle back in Ravenna prevented the fall of Rome. For 20 more years, the Slavs consolidated power while the diplomatic acumen of the Roman elders kept the Serb kings from conquering further. This final balance, however, could not last, and in 550, a new king came into power, one who desired the Latium and the city of Rome.

The Serbi and the Irvacci [11], along with the remaining Lombard host, marched down into central and southern Italy in winter 555, as another emperor, Flavianus, was assassinated. By May, the entirety of Northern Italy was conquered, and by August, the entire South had been subdued. On September 9th, 555, the Serbi and Irvacci king entered into Rome and slew the empire. He married the last daughter of the Roman emperor on the 24th, and the Roman Empire was dead in the continental West.


These invaders declared themselves Kings of Italy, and settled their tribes across the peninsula. The main cities - Tarentum, Ravenna, Roma and Florentia – remained as bastions of Roman culture. The Lombards scattered themselves throughout those four cities while the Slavs settled throughout the peninsula. Of course, the pagan Slavs had to convert- the king converted to Latin Christianity on Christmas Day, 567. With him were nobles and many of his soldiers. The Slavic kingdom would last another 49 years before fracturing into a variety of states.

In 616, the last king of the original dynasty died in his sleep, and the nobles took their chance at greater autonomy. Rome was declared a Republic, and would develop into the premier mercantile power of the peninsula. The Pope was too weak to seize his own land, and would be dominated by the Republic for much of the next two centuries. Ravenna would become the Kingdom of Ravenna, and Florentia would become the Duchy of Florentia. Various other towns and cities became local counties, and the south was fractured even more. The ruins of Neapolis and surrounding environs became the Duchy of Neapolis, while the Kingdom of Tarentum took the southeast corner of the boot.

By the late 7th century, the Roman successor states of the West had either been conquered or altered beyond all recognition by other peoples. The Roman heritage continued with the Eastern Empire, inheritor of the Roman state, much of the Roman professional army, and the Roman culture, continued in Greek rather than Latin. As the West underwent social digression and great turmoil, the East continued its cultural renaissance, unchallenged militarily and dominant in Mediterranean trade, resurgent after the loss of much of Southern Egypt and Mesopotamia.

[1] Novgorod
[2] Yenisei Kyrgyz/Kyrgyz
[3] Gaels/Irish
[4] Near Norwich
[5] Lincoln
[6] Chichester
[7] Dover
[8] Caernarvon
[9] Portus Cale/Oporto
[10] Naples
[11] Hrvatska/Croats (White and Other varieties)
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